Google Has 'Nothing to Announce' on AI Click Data as UK Deadline Nears

Google has until Dec. 3 to give UK publishers clicks and click-through rate data for AI Mode and AI Overviews under Competition and Markets Authority rules, yet the company says it has nothing to announce on new Search Console reporting.

Gary Illyes, a Google Search analyst, shut down speculation this week. Replying on LinkedIn early Monday to a post by SEO professional Rajeev Lekhwar, Illyes wrote: "I don't think we've phrased it like this. The team is super interested in giving more data, data that makes sense, but we don't have anything to announce yet."

Where did the claim come from?

Lekhwar's post attributed a quote to unnamed Google staff: "The clicks and queries data is the most requested data set by website owners and SEOs. We are also anticipating this data to be available in Google Search Console but, even we don't know by when this data will be added."

He tagged several Googlers, including Illyes and John Mueller, without identifying who said it. Illyes said the company had not phrased it that way. The post carried hashtags pointing to Google's Search Central Live event in Bengaluru on Oct. 30, which Google said was in person only, with no live stream or recording.

Mueller, Google's Search Advocate, addressed the issue separately on Bluesky. He wrote there is "lots of helpful data which isn't currently in Search Console" and that what counts as helpful data changes over time.

What does Search Console report today?

The Generative AI Performance Report, rolled out globally on Aug. 31, counts impressions only — each time AI Overviews or AI Mode shows links to a site — with breakdowns by page, country, device and date. It lists no clicks, CTR or queries.

Clicks from AI features land inside the standard Performance report as part of all web results. Per Google's help page, a click on a link within an AI Overview or AI Mode counts as one click, and each follow-up question in AI Mode counts as a new query. The standard report's Search Appearance Types include no category for AI Overviews or AI Mode, so publishers cannot separate AI-driven clicks from organic totals.

In short: you can see how often pages appear in AI features, but not how those appearances perform.

What does the CMA expect by December?

The CMA's publisher rules require Google to provide "clear and detailed metrics on user engagement" — impressions, clicks and click-through rate, aggregated across features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode — when publishers' content appears in AI search functions.

The regulator's interpretive notes add two requirements:

• A breakdown of all data by each individual publisher
• The ability to distinguish whether content appeared in an AI feature versus an organic search result

This information must be delivered via "a commonly accessible platform, such as Google Search Console." Google may satisfy the rules another way if it demonstrates compliance to the CMA. The rules cover AI features shown to UK users.

What happens next?

Page-level controls for AI search features are due three months after the Dec. 3 compliance date. Google's first compliance report to the CMA, covering June 3 through Dec. 3, is due Jan. 3, 2027, and the CMA expects to require a published summary of each report.

Illyes gave no time frame. Until Google ships click data — voluntarily or under UK pressure — marketers measuring AI search visibility will have to build their reporting around impressions alone.